“Yes?  Then go and get it and let us see it.”

“I haven’t it now, sir.  I—­I gave it away.”

“Oh, you gave it away!  To whom?  Can you get it back?”

“No, sir; I gave it to my cousin, who sailed for Germany last week.”

Miss Lloyd looked up in surprise, and that look of surprise told against her.  I could see Parmalee’s eyes gleam as he concluded in his own mind that the bag story was all false, was made up between mistress and maid, and that the part about the departing cousin was an artistic touch added by Elsa.

The coroner, too, seemed inclined to disbelieve the present witness, and he sat thoughtfully snapping the catch of the bag.

He turned again to Miss Lloyd.  “Having given away your own bag,” he said suavely, “you have perhaps provided yourself with another, have you not?”

“Why, no, I haven’t,” said Florence Lloyd.  “I have been intending to do so, and shall get one shortly, but I haven’t yet selected it.”

“And in the meantime you have been getting along without any?”

“A gold-mesh bag is not an indispensable article; I have several bags of other styles, and I’m in no especial haste to purchase a new one.”

Miss Lloyd’s manner had taken on several degrees of hauteur, and her voice was incisive in its tone.  Clearly she resented this discussion of her personal belongings, and as she entirely repudiated the ownership of the bag in the coroner’s possession, she was annoyed at his questions.

Mr. Monroe looked at her steadily.

“If this is not your bag, Miss Lloyd,” he said, with some asperity, “how did it get on Mr. Crawford’s desk late last night?  The butler has assured me it was not there when he looked in at a little after ten o’clock.  Yet this morning it lay there, in plain sight on the desk.  Whose bag is it?”

“I have not the slightest idea,” said Miss Lloyd firmly; “but, I repeat, it is not mine.”

“Easy enough to see the trend of Monroe’s questions,” said Parmalee in my ear.  “If he can prove this bag to be Miss Lloyd’s, it shows that she was in the office after ten o’clock last night, and this she has denied.”

“Don’t you believe her?” said I.

“Indeed I don’t.  Of course she was there, and of course it’s her bag.  She put that pretty maid of hers up to deny it, but any one could see the maid was lying, also.”

“Oh, come now, Parmalee, that’s too bad!  You’ve no right to say such things!”

“Oh, pshaw! you think the same yourself, only you think it isn’t chivalrous to put it into words.”

Of course what annoyed me in Parmalee’s speech was its inherent truth.  I didn’t believe Florence Lloyd.  Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t; for the appearance, manner and words of both women were not such as to inspire belief in their hearers.

If she and Elsa were in collusion to deny her ownership of the bag, it would be hard to prove the contrary, for the men-servants could not be supposed to know, and I had no doubt Mrs. Pierce would testify as Miss Lloyd did on any matter.